Ambassadors of the Sensible World

Abstract

We may work on things, but the opposite is perhaps even more true: things work on us. Reflecting on several projects of art and research that I have been involved in over the past years, which address different aspects of the environmental mutations currently in process, this paper will aim to partly divert from a usual focus on the deliberate intentions and goals that we can set ourselves as authors, rather observing how various objects of concern can progressively grow in our conscience and in our practice, calling for new transdisciplinary and investigative tools.

These projects include the observation of a negotiation summit re-enacted at SciencesPo Paris in 2012, during which the « specter » of climate change seemed to appear in the room as an almost physical presence; the long term artistic research project « A tale as a tool » developed with anthropologist and writer Sandrine Teixido, involving a text of fiction as an investigative object of mediation, allowing to collect testimonies by members of frontline communities from the South of Brazil to the North of Norway; and the research project « The Anthropocene Atlas of Geneva » at Geneva school of Art and Design, gathering self-reflexive interviews with numerous scientists, artists and other actors of the ecological transition.